the Casino
by Gender Outlaw
Summary: The jingle of falling coins hypnotized her, called to her. * Modern. Naruto shapeshifts.
1. Chapter 1

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_Driving to his house took me past a number of sad old casinos where you can find haggard gamblers trying their luck at 6a.m., the lights from the slots lambent in their expressionless eyes.  
_- The Third Wave of Therapy

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Naruto was still stumbling over his own feet when he walked; too young to reach much over his mother's knees. She strolled beside him, her heavy brown purse nonchalantly slapping his head as she glanced back and forth at the slot machines and card tables surrounding them.

His hand was tightly grasped inside hers, but she regarded him with a casual sort of indifference. As if she didn't really notice that he was there. She moved like it was dream; entranced by all around her and holding more wonder than natural for it all.

The woman started suddenly towards a rollet machine, the brightly painted images reflecting in her eyes. Her son hurried after, almost falling as he fought to hold of her.

The jingle of falling coins hypnotized her, called to her. It was a song she could hear and almost sing to.

She stopped before one large metallic masterpiece of a slot machine (one of hundreds), and pulled a quater from her purse like it was a piece of pure gold. She let the shiney surface of the change catch the glow of the florescent lights above her before kissing it once - for luck - and dropping it into the machine with her eyes closed.

She said a prayer and half smiled before pulling the lever that started the machine. The turning wheels clanged echoingly; too loud for the boy's ears - he covered them with his hands and shut his eyes.

The screams from winners and losers - patrons sitting on cold round lighly cushioned stools - sounded barbaric and feral to him. They reminded him of his father. He didn't know why. He didn't remember his father.

He opened his eyes; he suddenly wanted to hug his mother's legs. He loved the way she smelled. For as long as he could remember she had smelled that way: open and light as a breeze.

But she was gone.

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_Regrets are as personal as fingerprints.  
_- Margaret Culkin Banning

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Fifteen years seperated Itachi and his older brother, Sasuke.

Itachi worked in a dance hall on the edge of town - near the red light district. When nearly seven, he performed every night, and had a solo in almost all the numbers. By eleven years of age, he was teaching his own classes. He was professionally taught, and could show it in every move he made.

Itachi was the pride of the family, and everyone knew it.

Sasuke, on the other hand, had no talent for dancing, and quite frankly couldn't be worse off for it. Despite being the lead singer in a popular enough band, he could not do the one thing his family was famous for.

So, in his own mind, he was in peril.

He hated Itachi, he hated that his job was considered less than his brother's in the eyes of his family, he hated the way he got glanced over whenever his brother was near. It slowly started growing in his mind like a disease, this jealousy.

Sasuke got kicked out of the house when Itachi auditioned at, and successfully landed a gig for the _Open Umbrella_. He was on his own now, and could fail or succeed as he pleased.

Itachi was thirteen or fifteen now .. Sasuke wasn't sure. He was sitting at a bar, and more than over the legal drinking limit. He couldn't even remember where he parked his car. (Or what it looked like.) The contents of his glass swirled in his hand and he thought suddenly about his apartment, wondering if he had left the heater on all afternoon or not.

The rain was coming down outside worse than ever, and he was late for practice with his band.

He swallowed the drink in one gulp, nearly choking on an ice cube that snuck down his throat. The drink slammed on the smooth bar, and he leaned over it, resting his elbows on the counter and covering the rim of the cup with his forehead.

The bell over the door of the bar _clanged_ once, twice - in opening and closing. A tall man - dressed too expensively for the other side of town - walked briskly to the corner where Sasuke was hiding, his shoes clipping sharply against the floor.

He cleared his throat, and reached into a pocket of his jacket - adjusting the fabric almost unconciously as he pulled the letter out.

"_Wha-t?"_ Sasuke dragged the word out, letting it fall off him. He didn't look up at the man; preferring instead to press his face even more firmly into the rim of his glass.

The man cleared his throat again, seemed to contemplate something, then set the letter on the bar. But Sasuke refused to move. He glared at the tall, nicely dressed man from a corner of his eye, the shadows at the edge of his vision preventing him from seeing properly.

The man paused - then slid the paper under Sasuke's chin with two fingers and tapped it, before turning sharply on his heels and leaving.

Sasuke closed his eyes and went to sleep. In the morning he would have a hangover. In the morning he would open the letter. And his head would hurt all the worse for it when he did.

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_And when I looked / The moon had turned to gold.  
_- Blue Moon, We Belong Together

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Kiba slept it off.

He always slept it off, he mused silently, resting his head on the hard surface of his bed. He glared through the open bars at the end of his little room, watching the guard sort through his belongings with all the interest of a second-grade teacher: too used to mischief to care.

He dusted off a few pieces of glass that still clung to his shirt from where he tried to dive out a window in a bank. The problem hadn't been that he dove out the window, but rather where he fell - the top of a police cruiser.

He was lucky not to have fallen from too far up; the roll off the roof was the most embarrasing thing he could say. He hadn't even had a chance to get his feet into a good run when he was tackled and handcuffed though. Pity. And that job had been going so well too.

He grinned and started humming.

From the other side of the room, Neji glared at him. He would barrate Kiba - not just yet. He'd wait until their bail was posted before letting it all out. (They didn't even get to the damn cash registers before Kiba jumped - he started yelling at the people and when the security guard pulled out his gun, the boy dove away. Kiba claimed it happened differently though.

But Neji blamed Kiba. Kiba had started screaming about what they were going to do and suchforth - really such a nusciance. When the guard started firing his gun, Neji _really_ blamed Kiba.)

Kiba was competent, when he wanted to be. Neji wouldn't have partnered with him if he wasn't. The problem, though, was that Kiba was only competent in what he could _do_, not what he could say. Neji once remarked that his mouth was like a 'loose trap; always open and never catching what it should'.

Put Kiba in a laser grid and he could come out the other side without a scratch. Put him in a situation like this morning and - well, it always happened. That's what Neji was for. That was what Neji did. Talk.

Oh well. They'd try again tonight anyways. Just as soon as Neji's little cousin came and posted the bail. Hinata should have been here an half hour ago.

Neji resumed glaring at Kiba. He hated delays.

(Kiba, on contrast, started tapping his feet in time to the tune he hummed.)

Hinata would be another half hour late, apologizing about the traffic that kept her as Kiba's dog tried to jump out of the 'Seeing Eye Dog' harness she strapped him in to lick his master's face - who would be just as eager to see his pet.

But no one would take a second glance at her as she held the handle of the dog akwardly and lead the two boys out of the station to where she parked the car. They played it off nicely, Kiba happily opening the door for her before she got through it, and Neji trailing carefully behind.

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_Even in a crowd, still you are a stranger.  
_- Are You Lonely, Ann Mortifee & Valerie Hennell

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Naruto opened the door, naked, and leaned against the wood frame - half-asleep and with eyes so lidded, they could barely be called open. He yawned until his jaw cracked.

Inari sighed and rubbed the skin of his own forehead, where a band of cloth wrapped it's way around from top to bottom, ends dangling over his shoulder. "Don't you own _any_ pants?" He cracked the bones in his neck with his hand, and looked up at the slightly taller one.

Naruto glanced down himself, seemingly noticing for the first time the .. _'breeze'_ and his lack of clothing, before lifting his head to meet Inari's eyes and grin a smile that lit his face like a latern.

"Apparently not, it seems." Naruto was almost laughing - his eyes shut tight in humor as he fell further into the framing of the door. Inari wasn't by the joke, and scratched an itch on the back of his head while he waited.

"Please," Naruto stepped back into the still-open doorway, "_enter_ my humble abode." He mock-bowed and swept his arms out in a welcoming gesture.

Inari snorted and pushed him out of the way.

* * *

_Note: _I don't much like the Kiba/Neji scene. It just .. won't come out right. So this is a modern fic, that's supposed to be loosely centered around this casino that may or may not get robbed later in the story.

I'm having lots of trouble writing this one.


	2. Chapter 2

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_  
Thank you sir, but I expect a certain amount of pain.  
_- Early Edition / Gary Hobson

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"You'll have to use your _other _form", Inari stated over his half-full cup of coffee. They were sitting in what passed for a kitchen in Naruto's apartment, where the clock ticked the time so loud it was an audible companion.

Naruto stumbled fractionally on his way back from the kitchen, his feet barely missing the step. But his drink didn't spill a drop. He walked around the lone chair where Inari sat in a movement that did not meet eyes.

"Double pay. Tell them that I'll need double pay for that." His voice was flat, but not without emotion as he sat on the other end of the couch, drawing into himself as the steam from the coffee scorched his nose.

Inari sipped the hot liquid, and closed his eyes as he waited. Stalling..

Naruto pulled a bottle out from between the seat cusions and added the dark contents heartily to his own cup. Without glancing at him, Inari advised, "You know that's bad for you."

Naruto didn't meet his eyes.

He had tried explaining the transformation once to his only friend, but couldn't do proper justice to that feeling of bones shifting and muscles moving unnaturally. It wasn't something that words could ever convey. Only experience. You had to feel it to know it.  
_  
"It is something within me that I know exists but cannot see. A disease I cannot touch. I was left this cursed blood, but given no way to use it. What good is it being but half a human?" _This was something he had said once during a conversation on his shape-shifting abilities.

Because Naruto could turn into only one thing: himself.

Surprisingly enough, his female form was actually a little taller than the male. He, of course, had grown up male - but he knew properties of his other gender. How to blend in as if he wore the mask his entire life.

"Where is it?" Naruto spoke his question into his cup, happily becoming intoxicated.

Inari looked up without speaking for a few seconds. He waited until Naruto looked straight at him before answering.

" .. The new place."

Naruto blinked. "What 'new place'? I just got back in town, you know, but I really didn't think I've been gone for that long."

A song got stuck in Inari's head all of a sudden and he yearned to sing _'I want a new drug.' _But he went back to his coffee instead, trying not to hum tunelessly.

"Uchiha Itachi's." Inari didn't need to say more.

Naruto turned back to his own drink as well. "Oh," was all he could muster.

He remembered Itachi.

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_  
The rainy streets are empty for nobody else has woken.  
_- Never Coming Home, Sting

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Shikamaru sipped his glass in the main lobby of the casino, where electic modern flowers were all that seperated the slot machines from the hotel-like section of the building. He could smell oils from the kitchens wafting up from behind him, tickling his nose and teasing his stomach.

Seated between him and poker tables on a solid leather couch was a dignified older woman, with white curls done up in pinks. Her dress looked like old apolstry - patterned flowers, fabric, and buttons. Her attention was soley focused on the open bible in her lap, which a perfectly thin nail traced the lines of, slowly.

He wasn't usually much of one for drinking, but the sky earlier this afternoon had not been one for landing and his plane didn't seem to want to cooperate like it should have. The gears stuck, the wheels didn't click in place, and all _this_ with storm clouds raging around him.

Nara Shikamaru was a Denver pilot, but sometimes he got taken out to Los Angeles. A flight was a flight, you know?

From the heavens, LA looked like heaven on earth, all lit up from the insides-out better than the holiest of temples. And as he approached for touchdown, the casinos loomed up beside him - orndate, inanimate, glimmering little trees.

He put his glass to his lips again, and took another drink.

.. not every hotel-casino served chocolate milk at this hour. That was why he liked coming here.

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_  
We are the ones they left behind.  
_- We Don't Need Another Hero, Thunderdom

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Inari and Naruto had grown for several years in the same town, at the same school.

Naruto had been an orphan with a rebellious streak and a smart mouth. He was trouble from the get-go, obviously enough. So, Inari was of course drawn to him like nothing else. They spent a lot of nights talking in the back alleys between buildings. Too reputed to venture back to Inari's home, Naruto never offered to go back to his.

Naruto was always sworn to be seen walking beneath the moon in a town so small they still turned their lights off at nine o'clock. He was unusual, and the town shunned him. To them Naruto was something they could easily do without. Though, to be true, he had done nothing to change those opinions. Inari only, knew some of the why.  
_  
"They all need something to believe in, Naruto. Just, something to believe in."  
_  
Naruto was never really one thing or another. It was an oddity, an abomination, a freak of nature to be able to do this, but _he could_. He could be _both_ - both genders, though never at the same time. He had been born with such a strange ability, but Inari didn't know all the exact details of this history..

He just understood that Naruto could, and did, change his form at will. Naruto was never anything that was not esentially _his _body - male or female - and Inari had a lingering suspicion in the back of his mind that Naruto was not exactly human.

This was nothing he'd voice. But the thought was there.

(Inari never really knew what to say or do when Naruto spoke about his abnormalities, these strange traits that should not even be possible but _were_. Naruto would talk and talk, on and on, like Inari was taking part in a conversation instead of simply listening and trying not to look stupid for lack of what to say..)

Well, not _completely _human, atleast. From the way Naruto described her (with a faraway look and such soft words that Inari had to strain to hear them) his mother was as human as they came. Like the wind was human.

Nobody knew who Naruto's father was.

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_  
There's a danger in loving somebody too much.  
_- Sometimes Love Aint Enough, Patty Smyth & Don Henley

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_A young voice smoothed it's way across the loudspeakers, thick and rich in tones of legendary melody. His tongue had to be long, for the words he sung wound like a rooted rope over the crowd. It was all almost as intoxicating as the alcohol._

_But the Uzumaki boy could only have been twelve from the slimness of his form as he moved unsteadily to the flow given by the singer. The sound was a poor puppet's strings, reaching only just so far. His hands held one that smiled at him, for they were both innocent and happy then._

_His feet could have been quicker upon any other floor, but his eyes strayed not from the redness he saw in those lips as they breathed almost-kisses upon his nose. He was in love, and it showed upon his cheeks._

_He traced the hip of the one in front of him. Smiling he lead by more halfness, into a language never learned._

_._

_On the mountain was a treasure / Buried deep beneath the stone,  
And the valley-people swore / They'd have it for their very own.  
_- One Tin Soldier, Coven

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Shikamaru was waiting, in the hotel lobby again, with a cup of whole milk in one hand.

He had taken the couch this time, and was stretched across the cushions so bodilessly that he could have been made of water.

Kiba approached him from behind, plans rolled up into a tight roll, and a devasting smile that spoke no good.

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End file.
